Neverwhere by Neil Gaimen

Fiction: Sci-Fi. Audiobook from Harper Audio. Published in 1996, recorded 2007. 12 hours, 37 minutes. Read by the author. Downloaded from Audible.com.

I have had this book in paperback for a while, but hadn’t gotten around to reading it. When I saw that it was available as an audio book, I jumped right on it. I’m glad I did. It was an enjoyable story. It can be an iffy proposition when an author reads a book, but Neil Gaimen did a great job.

Publisher’s summary:Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but shrewish fiancée. Then one night he stumbles upon a girl lying on the sidewalk, bleeding. He stops to help her, and his life is changed forever.

Soon he finds himself living in a London most people would never have dreamed of: a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels. It is a world that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations. And it is the home of Door, the girl whom Richard rescued, and whom, if he is ever to return home, he must now help in her mission to preserve this strange underworld kingdom from a mysterious figure determined to destroy it.

If Tim Burton rewrote Phantom of the Opera, if Jack Finney had a dark side, if you rolled up the best of Clive Barker, Peter Straub, and Caleb Carr into one, you still wouldn’t have Neil Gaiman. In Neverwhere, he delivers one of the most absorbing reads to come along in years.
And, if you’d prefer paperback: Neverwhere: A Novel

Oh, and apparently the BBC did a mini of it a while back. Naturally, someone has uploaded it to YouTube. You have to watch it in ten minute segments. Here’s the first, then follow the links for the rest: